Organic LEDs are a bright idea for home lighting

University of Florida materials science and engineers have achieved a new record in the efficiency of blue organic light-emitting diodes - reaching a key milestone of 50 lumens per watt.

This is about the same as today's energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs, and three times better than old school incandescent bulbs.

Blue Christmas

Being able to generate blue light efficiently is particularly important as it is a key component to making natural-looking white light - a problem some eco-bulbs have had in the past.

Florida researchers are hoping to eventually be able to make OLED bulbs that give 100 lumens per watt of pure white light.

A key advantage of OLED bulbs is that they are tunable: each OLED is an individual light, which means differently coloured OLEDs can be combined to produced different shades of light — red, green, blue or rich, warm white light for the home.